Gamingdeputy reported on February 29 that last week, the probe “Odysseus” of the American private space company Intuitive Machines landed near the south pole of the moon, making history. However, the landing was not smooth, and the probe encountered numerous challenges, including one or more of its landing legs breaking off.
Gamingdeputy noticed that the 4.3-meter-tall probe landed on the gray dust near the moon's south pole on February 22. This was the first time the United States achieved a soft landing on the moon since the “Apollo 17” mission in 1972.
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But Odysseus' landing was not smooth. Due to a problem with its navigation equipment, the six-legged probe descended faster than expected and higher than the target area.
“The impact on landing is greater, and it happens during the landing,” Steve Altemus, CEO and co-founder of Intuitive Machines, said in a press release on February 28. There was some sliding. The landing gear took most of the load and probably broke off one or two landing legs.”
Odysseus stood upright for about two seconds on terrain that was tilted about 12 degrees, then began to tilt, eventually coming to rest at an inclination of about 30 degrees with one of its fuel tanks or other equipment supporting it on the lunar surface.
This tilted attitude is less than ideal, preventing Odysseus from using its high-gain antenna to communicate with Earth and putting its top solar panels in shadow. But Intuitive Machines used Odysseus' low-gain antenna to send images and scientific data to Earth.
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The company today shared a photo of the Odysseus landing, with the broken landing leg clearly visible.
On February 27, the detector successfully sent back a selfie photo. The company said the photo provides a deeper understanding of Odysseus' position on the lunar surface.
If everything had gone according to plan on landing day, people would have been able to get spectacular photos of the lunar surface as Odysseus touched down. The rover carried a student-built EagleCam camera system that could have been deployed at an altitude of 30 meters and filmed the final stages of the landing, but due to navigation issues, the mission team decided to leave it on the rover.
EagleCam is currently about 4 meters away from the Odyssey, but has not yet returned any images. Engineers are troubleshooting the problem.
EagleCam is one of 12 payloads carried by Odysseus, six of which are scientific experiments or technology demonstration projects funded by NASA through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLPS).
NASA officials said at a news conference today that they have obtained data from all five powered instruments. (Another payload is a passive laser reflector array designed to help other spacecraft navigate.)
“We're all very excited now because we've got a lot of data from the lunar surface,” said Sue Lederer, CLPS project scientist at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
With the long, cold moonlit night approaching, Intuitive Machines will power down Odysseus today, when data transfers will cease. The Moon takes approximately 27 Earth days to rotate once on its axis, so each night lasts approximately two weeks.
Odysseus' ground mission is expected to last only about a week. Therefore, the coming night could destroy the lander, destroying its electronics and batteries.